Mongolia has been inhabited for over 850,000 years.[1]Important prehistoric sites are the paleolithic cave drawings of the Khoid Tsenkheriin Agui (Northern Cave of Blue) inKhovd province,[2]and the Tsagaan Agui (White Cave) in Bayankhongorprovince.[3] A neolithic farming settlement has been found in Dornod province. Contemporary findings from western Mongolia include only temporary encampments of hunters and fishers. The population during the Copper Age has been described as paleomongolid in the east of what is now Mongolia, and as europid in the west.[2]

Slab Grave Culture is a Mongolic archaeological culture of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age.[4]This culture is the main archaeological find of the Bronze Age Mongolia.

The geographic area the Slab Grave culture covered

Slab Grave cultural monuments are found in northern, central and eastern Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Northwest China(Xinjiang region,Qilian Mountains etc.), Manchuria, Lesser Khingan, Buryatia, Irkutsk Oblast and Zabaykalsky Krai.

In the 2nd millennium B.C, during the bronze age, western Mongolia was under the influence of the Karasuk culture. Deer stones and the omnipresent kheregsüürs (small kurgans) probably are from this era; other theories date the deer stones as 7th or 8th centuries BC. A vast Iron Age burial complex from the 5th-3rd century, later also used by the Xiongnu, has been unearthed near Ulaangom.[2]

Before the 20th century, some scholars assumed that the Scythians descended from the Mongolic people.[5]The Scythian community inhabited western Mongolia in the 5-6th century. In 2006 the mummy of a Scythian warrior, which is believed to be about 2,500 years old was a 30-to-40 year-old man with blond hair, and was found in the Altai, Mongolia.[6]

In historical times the Altaic peoples were concentrated on the steppe lands of Central Asia.[7]Furthermore, it is assumed that the Turkic peopleshavealways inhabited the western, the Mongols the central, and the Tungusic peoples the eastern portions of the Altaic region.[7]

By the eighth century B.C., the inhabitants of Mongolian western part evidently were nomadic Indo-European speakers, either Scythians [8]or Yuezhi. In central and eastern parts of Mongolia were many other tribes that were primarily Mongol in their ethnologic characteristics.[8]

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